which he was held by my only fellow-guest, Washington Irving,
whose Life, indeed, contains more than one letter to him,
beginning, " Dear Horse Shoe," and ending " Geoffrey Crayon."
Though far advanced in his seventy-fifth year, and though he
had occasionally suffered not a little of late from severe physical
infirmities, Mr. Kennedy was naturally of so genial and joyous
a temper, and sympathized so warmly with the young and gay,
that the idea of his being an old man had hardly yet occurred
to any one but himself. In the eyes of those around him, he
seemed to have nothing of age except its experience and its mel
lowness. He was not insensible himself, however, to the ap
proach of the inexorable hour. In a letter which I received
from him not many weeks ago, one of the last of a series
running through a term of more than thirty years, he said to
me with more of sadness than I had ever known him to write, cer
tainly in regard to himself: " It is but small consolation to me
when I look at my letter-file, and see three or four of your
letters asking for a word of recognition to argue my good
intentions, and my infirmity of hand, for that silence which I
daily resolve to break ; for it is so persistently followed by a
78 JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY.
new delinquency, in the breach of my resolve, as to bring me
nothing better than a new regret. But I know you will pardon
these habitual shortcomings, like the good and trusty friend
you have always been, and indulge me in that constrained
silence, which is, in truth, only the sign and warning of one
more inevitable, that comes with gentle step and, I trust, a
friendly message to make it welcome."
A few weeks more at Saratoga Springs, by the advice of his
physician, and a few weeks after wards at Newport, where he
had fixed his summer residence for several years past, completed
his earthly career. A hidden malady was developed, which,
after two days of agony, patiently and bravely borne, and one
day of tranquil slumbers, released him to his rest. I may not
omit to add that, in a blessed interval of wakefulness and ease,
he eagerly renewed those pledges of Christian faith which he
had often given in health, and was able to take leave of those
dearest to him, as he said, " In perfect peace of mind and body."
He died at Newport, on the 18th of August ; and his remains
were at once removed to his native city, to repose in the neigh
boring Green Mount Cemetery, at the dedication of which he
had delivered the Address, in 1839.
Mr. Kennedy left no children. His wife, who, with her
sister, has rendered his home for more than thirty years so dear
and delightful to himself, and so attractive to his friends, is a
daughter of the late Edward Gray, Esq., of Baltimore, one of
the worthiest and most respected merchants of that city ; of
whom Irving, on hearing of his death in 1856, wrote thus, in
words which I can indorse with all my heart : " To be under his
roof, at Baltimore, or at Ellicott s Mills, was to be in a constant
state of quiet enjoyment to me. Every thing that I saw in him,
and in those about him ; in his tastes, habits, mode of life ; in
his domestic relations and chosen intimacies, continually struck
upon some happy chord in my own bosom, and put me in tune
with the world and with human nature."
Mr. Kennedy received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of
Laws from Harvard University in 1863 ; and had been, for some
years, an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences.
TWO HUNDKED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSAKY
OP THE
LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS.
AN ORATION DELIVERED AT PLYMOUTH, DECEMBER 21, 1870.
THERE can be no true New England heart which does not
throb to-day with something of unwonted exultation. There
can be no true American heart, I think, which has not found
itself swelling with a more fervent gratitude to God, and a more
profound veneration for the Pilgrim Fathers, as this morning s
sun has risen above the hill-tops, in an almost midsummer glory,
and ushered in, once more, with such transcendent splendor,
this our consecrated Jubilee.
When we reflect on the influence which has flowed, and is
still flowing, in ever fresh and ceaseless streams, from yonder
Rock, which two centuries and a half ago was struck for the
first time by the foot of civilized, Christian man ; when we re
flect how mightily that influence has prevailed, and how widely
it has pervaded the world, inspiring and aiding the settlement
of Massachusetts, and, through Massachusetts, of all New Eng
land, and, through New England, of so large a part of our whole
wide-spread country, and thus, through the example of our
country and its institutions, extending the principles of civil
and religious freedom to the remotest regions of the earth,
leaving no corner of Christendom, or even of Heathendom, un-
visited or unrefreshed, we should be dead, indeed, to every
[79]
80 TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
emotion of gratitude to God or man, were we not to hail this
Anniversary as one of the grandest in the calendar of the
Ages.
We are here, my friends, to celebrate the Fifth Jubilee of
what is now known emphatically, wherever the history of New
England, or the history of America, is read, as " The Landing."
No other landing, temporary or permanent, upon our own or
upon any other shore, can ever usurp its title, or ever super
sede or weaken its hold upon the world s remembrance and
regard.
There have been other landings, I need hardly say, which
have left a proud and shining mark on the historic page:
landings of discoverers ; landings of conquerors ; landings of
kings or princes, called by right of restoration or revolution to
take possession of time-honored thrones ; landings of organized
Colonies, from large and well-appointed fleets, on conspicuous
coasts, to occupy territories opened and prepared, in some de
gree, for human habitation.
Not such was the Landing which we commemorate to-day.
Not such the event which has rendered this shortest day of all
the year so memorable for ever in the annals of human freedom.
It was the landing of a few weary and wave- worn men from a
single ship, nay, from a single shallop, on a bleak and des
olate shore, amid the storms and tempests of a well-nigh arctic
winter, with none to welcome, none even to witness it. I
might, indeed, be almost pardoned for saying, that the sun itself
stood still in the heavens to behold it ! But there were, cer
tainly, no other witnesses, save those witnesses to each other s
constancy and courage who were themselves the actors in the
scene, and that all-seeing omnipresent God, who guided and
guarded all their steps.
Turn back with me to that epoch of the winter solstice, just
two hundred and fifty years ago, and let us spend at least a por
tion of this flying hour in attempting to recall the precise inci
dents which then occurred on the spot on which we are
assembled, with some of their immediate antecedents and conse
quences. There have been, and will be, other occasions for
boasting, if any one desires to boast, of what New England has
OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 81
accomplished, directly or indirectl} , for herself or for mankind,
in later times. There have been, and will be, other opportu
nities for a general glorification of New England principles, New
England achievements, New England inventions and discover
ies, past or present, remote or recent. We recognize them all
to-day, all, at least, that are worthy of being recognized at
all, as the legitimate result and development of this day s
doings. We count and claim the progress of our country, in its
best and worthiest sense, as the " Pilgrims Progress;" as
the grand and glorious advance upon a line of march in which
they were the pioneers, and for which they, in their own ex
pressive phrase, literally as well as metaphorically, were the
instruments " to break the ice for others."
To them the honors of this day are due. To their memories
this Anniversary is sacred. Once in fifty years, certainly, we
may well refresh our remembrance of what they did and suf
fered, and still more of the aims and ends of all their doings
and sufferings. It is an old story, it is true ; but there are some
old stories which are almost forgotten into newness. There are
some old .stories which are actually new to every rising genera
tion, and of whose real interest and nobleness thousands of
young hearts receive their first vivid impression from what may
be said or done on some occasion like the present. There are
some old stories, too, of which even those who hold them in
fondest and most familiar remembrance are never weary ; and
the appetite for which no repetitions can ever cloy, or even sat
isfy. There are some old stories, let me add, and this is
eminently one of them, around which a haze, or it may be a
halo, of legend and romance is gradually allowed to gather and
thicken with the lapse of years, and which require and demand
to be set forth afresh, from time to time, in their true simplicity
and grandeur.
But there is no longer an excuse for doubt or uncertainty as
to any substantial statement relating to the Pilgrim Fathers.
Tradition, legend, romance, can find " no jutty, frieze, buttress,
nor coigne of vantage, for their pendent bed and procreant
cradle," in that solid structure of fact and truth which has re
cently been built up, let me rather say, which has recently
TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
been discovered and unveiled, in all the simple beauty of its
original proportions, by the loving students and diligent in
vestigators of Pilgrim history.
It is, indeed, a peculiar advantage of all young countries like
our own, that, originating in a period of written and printed
records, they may trace back the current of their career to its
primal source and spring, without leaving room for any inter
mixture of myth or fable. Yet written or even printed records
may disappear, or be overlooked and forgotten for a time,
awaiting such a search and such a scrutiny as Grote and Nie-
buhr, and Merivale and Mommsen, have recently brought to
the history of Greece or Rome ; or as Froude, even more re
markably, has just given to the history of England s Queen
Elizabeth.
Even such a search and such a scrutiny have of late been ap
plied to the history of the little band whose landing we are here
to commemorate, and most richly have they been rewarded.
Since the last Jubilee of the Pilgrims was celebrated, fifty years
ago, when that grand discourse of New England s grandest
orator and statesman summoned the attention of the world so
emphatically to their sublime but simple story, antiquarians
at home and abroad, pious and painstaking students, American
travellers in foreign lands not forgetful of their own, one and
all, have seemed inflamed with a new zeal to subject that story
to the closest examination ; to sift out from it every thing con
jectural and legendary ; and to investigate the Pilgrim track,
footstep by footstep, wherever it could be found, in the Old
World as well as in the New. Nothing has been too minute or
trivial to elude their search ; nothing too seemingly inscrutable
to repel or discourage their pursuit ; nothing too generally
credited to satisfy their eagerness for positive proof and authen
tic verification. As the marvellous growth of that majestic
perennial, of which the Mayflower supplied the seed, has been
developed and displayed, with all its myriad leaves for the heal
ing of the nations, and all its magic branches for sweetening so
many bitter fountains, and all its rich and varied fruits for our
selves and for mankind, they have been more and more incited
to trace back that seed to its native bed ; to analyze with almost
OF THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 83
chemical exactness its smallest seminal principles ; and to ascer
tain precisely by what culture, and by what hands, it was made
so to take root upon a rock, and to bud and blossom and bear
so abundantly in a wilderness.
We owe these laborious investigators a deep debt of grati
tude, and it is fit that we should not forget them, this day, as
we avail ourselves of their researches. I need but name the
late admirable Judge Davis, whose excellent edition of " Mor
ton s Memorial" led the way in the later illustrations of
Pilgrim history. I need but name the late Reverend Dr. Alex
ander Young, whose " Chronicles of Plymouth " ought to be fresh
in the memory of every son and daughter of the old Colony.
But let me recall more deliberately a venerable antiquary of
Old England, whom it was my good fortune to meet at the
breakfast-table of the celebrated historian Hallam, nearly a
quarter of a century ago, the late Reverend Joseph Hunter ;
who, having diversified his routine of service, in her Majesty s
Public Record Office, by tracts illustrative of the great triumphs
of his own country in arms and in literature, triumphs by the
sword of Henry V. at Agincourt, and triumphs by the pens of
Shakspeare and Milton in the fields of epic or dramatic poetry,
turned to the Pilgrims of Plymouth, and to the Puritans of
Massachusetts, for the latest and best themes of his unwearied
investigations. To him we primarily owe it that we can follow
back that little band, to which the name of Brownists had been
contemptuously given, to the very hive from which they first
swarmed, that little circle in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire,
and not far from Lincolnshire, around which he so fitly inscribed
the legend, " Maxim se gentis incunabula," the cradle of the
greatest nation. By the light of his antiquarian torch, we are
able to fix the precise locality and surroundings of the old
Manor Place of Scrooby, formerly a palace of the Archbishops
of York, and which had often been the residence of at least one
of them, " that he might enjoy the diversion of hunting " in the
neighboring chase of Hatfield ; which was occupied as a refuge
for many weeks by the great lord Cardinal Wolsey, when, hav
ing " ventured in a sea of glory, but far beyond his depth," he
had at last been left, " weary and old with service, to the mercy
84 TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
of a rude stream," which was for ever to hide him ; and which,
not many years afterwards, Henry the Eighth himself had se
lected for a resting-place, during one of his Royal progresses to
the North; but which, half a century later, had become the
home of one, whose occupation of it, even for an hour, would
have given it a celebrity and a sanctity in our remembrance and
regard, which neither Archbishops, nor Cardinals, nor Kings,
could have imparted to it in a lifetime.
There, in that " manor of the Bishops," of which, alas !
hardly a fragment is now left, lived WILLIAM BREWSTER,
one of the noblest of the men whom we are here to commemo
rate, and not unworthy to be named first of all, on such an
occasion as this. Educated at the University of Cambridge,
and having served as the faithful Secretary of the accomplished
Davison, Queen Elizabeth s Ambassador in Holland, and after
wards one of her Secretaries of State, until Davison s too
prompt and implicit obedience to the orders of his Royal Mis
tress in the matter of poor Mary, Queen of Scots, had afforded
a pretext for discarding him, Brewster had retired with dis
gust from the pomps and vanities, the caprices and cruelties, of
the Court, and had given himself up to religious meditation and
study. Deeply impressed with the corruptions and superstitions,
the prelatical assumptions and tyrannies, of the English Church,
as it then existed, in those earlier transition stages of the Ref
ormation, he had united himself with one of the little bodies of
Separatists from that communion, and soon became " a special
help and stay to them." At his house, this very " manor of
the Bishops," which Mr. Hunter helped us to identify, we
learn that the members of the church of which the sainted Rob
inson was the pastor, the church of our Plymouth Pilgrims,
"ordinarily met on the Lord s Day; and with great love he
entertained them when they came, making provision for them
to his great charge ; and continued so to do while they could
stay in England."
Our mother country has many spots within her dominions
which are dear to the hearts of the lovers of religious and of
civil liberty in both hemispheres : The plain of Runnymede,
the Lollard s Tower, the Tower of London, the Martyrs Mon-
OP THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS. 85
ument at Oxford, the glorious Abbey of Westminster, the
grand Cathedrals in almost every county ; but I know of none
more worthy of being visited with pious reverence, by every
American traveller certainly, than that old original site of
Brewster s residence in Nottinghamshire ; nor one which more
deserves to be marked, not indeed by any ostentatious or
sumptuous structure, out of all keeping with the plain and
frugal character of those who have made it memorable for ever,
but by some appropriate monument, a chapel or a school-house,
erected by the care and at the cost of the sons and daughters of
New England. We all remember that John Cotton s chapel at
Old Boston was restored, not many years ago, by the contribu
tions of a few of the generous sons of New Boston. The place
where Robinson and B re water gathered that first Pilgrim Church
is certainly not less worthy of commemoration.
But it is not only the residence of Brewster which the re
searches of good Mr. Hunter, the very Nimrod of Antiquaries,
have revealed to us. There, within that charmed circle the
cradle of the greatest nation he helped us to discover a birth
place, which owing to a blundering misprint had so long baffled
the most eager search ; the birthplace of one who might almost
contest with Brewster himself the right to be named first at any
commemoration of the Pilgrim Fathers, their Governor for
thirty years, their Historian, their principal writer both in prose
and verse, and second to no one of them, from first to last, in
the fidelity and devotion with which he sustained and illustrated
their principles. There, within that same charmed circle, of
which the little market town of Bawtry is the centre, and the
greater part, if not the whole, of which is now the property of
one whose recent title, as a peer, has not obliterated our remem
brance of his name as a poet, and who may be recalled with the
more pleasure at this hour as one of the few among the English
nobility who sympathized with the North in our late war for
the Union, there, in the record book of the little church of
Austerfield, still standing, has been found the distinct entry,
" William, son of William, Bradfourth, baptized the XIX^ day
of March, Anno Dni 1589."
I hold in my hand a photographic picture of that ancient
86 TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
edifice, and one, too, of the registered entry of Bradford s bap
tism, given me two or three years ago by Lord Hough ton,
Monckton Milnes that was, now Lord of the Manor, I believe,
and which I would gladly deposit in your Pilgrim Museum,
if they are not there already. 1
The font from which Bradford was christened, and the altar-
rails at which his parents doubtless kneeled for he must have
been baptized according to the rites, and by a pastor, of the
Church of England are still preserved. But neither pastor
nor parents could have dreamed, as the infant boy winced, per
haps, from the coldness of that sprinkled water, and shrunk, it
may be, from the signing with the sign of the cross upon his
tiny forehead, how sturdy and uncompromising a hater he was
to become, in his mature life, of all mere forms and shows and
ceremonies of religion ; and, at the same time, how earnest and
ardent and devoted a lover and upholder of the great truths
and doctrines of which these were but the outward and visible
signs.
Bradford and Brewster, if I mistake not, are the only two of
our Pilgrim leaders, who can be distinctly identified with that
little church at Scrooby, of which the venerable Richard Clifton
and the zealous John Robinson were the associated pastor and
teacher, and out of which came this first permanent settlement
of New England. Bradford, indeed, was but a boy in age, at
that early period, hardly more than sixteen years old, an
orphan boy, and must have been like a son to Brewster, who
was thirty years his senior ; but he was a boy who seems to
have known "little more of the state of childhood but its inno-
cency and pleasantness," and who was capable, even then, of
rendering no feeble aid and comfort to his maturer leader and
friend. Together they braved persecution. Together they
bore the taunts and scoffs of neighbors and relatives. Together
they embraced exile. Together they were cast into prison at
old Boston in Lincolnshire. Together, after a brief separation,
for Bradford was liberated first on account of his youth,
they found refuge in Holland. Together they embarked in the
Mayflower. Together they were associated for three and
1 They were deposited accordingly.
OP THE LANDING OP THE PILGRIMS. 87
twenty years, for Bre \vster lived in a vigorous old age till
1643, in establishing and ruling the Pilgrim plantation here at
New Plymouth.
Brewster and Bradford, the ^Eneas and Ascanius of our grand
Pilgrim Epic, I might better have said, the Paul and Tim
othy, or be it Titus, of our New England, Plymouth, Separatist
Church, both of them laymen, but both of them, by life and
word, by precept and example, showing forth the great doc
trines of Christ, their Saviour, with a power and a persuasive
ness which might well have been envied by any pastor or
preacher or lordly prelate of that or any other day : For ever
honored be their names in New England history and in New
England hearts ! Alas ! that no portrait of either of them is
left, if, indeed, in their simplicity and modesty, they would
ever have allowed one to be taken, so that their image, as
well as their names and their example, might be held up to the
contemplation of our country and of mankind for endless gen
erations !
But the little church of which they were members was able,
as we know, to maintain its precarious and perilous existence
at Scrooby, for hardly more than a single year, certainly for not
more than two years. It could find indeed no safe refuge or
resting-place in Old England ; and having heard that in the
Low Countries, as they were then called, there was freedom, or
at least toleration, for differences of religious faiths and forms,
its members resolved to fly from persecution and establish them
selves in Holland. I will not attempt to describe the perils
they encountered, and the sufferings they endured, in that
flight ; the separations of children from parents, and of wives
from husbands ; the arrests arid examinations, the fines and im
prisonments, to which so many of them were subjected ; the
" hair-breadth scapes " of one large party of them during a
tempestuous voyage of fourteen days, in crossing the German
Ocean, in an almost sinking ship. The whole story is familiar
to you. It is enough that we find them all at last safely in
Amsterdam, where they are free to enjoy their pure and simple
worship, and where they remain quietly for another year.
Not a trace is left of their residence in that then mighty mart,
88 TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY
almost a second Venice ; born of the sea, " built in the very
lap of the floods, and encircled in their watery arms ; " and
claiming the whole ocean, from the Baltic to the Levant, not
only as the field of its enterprise, but almost as its own rightful
inheritance and domain. Not a trace of them is left there.
We only know that, finding they were in danger of being in
volved in contentions about women s dresses and men s starched
bands, and other such vital matters, which had sprung up in
another little church of English Separatists which had fled
there before them, and thus of being robbed of that harmony
and peace which they prized above all earthly things, and which
they had abandoned home and kindred and country to enjoy,
they thought it best to remove once more, and establish them
selves at the neighboring inland city of Leyden.
It was a great epoch in Dutch history, when the Pilgrims
took up their abode in Holland, and began to habituate them
selves to its "strange and uncouth" customs and language. It
was the precise period at which, as the close and consummation
of " the most tremendous war for liberty ever waged," our own
Motley has terminated his admirable account of " The United
Netherlands," to begin it again, we trust, at no distant day,
and then to show us precisely what was going on in that inter